Those of us who came to be Christians get to remember that forgiveness cost God the death of God's son. It's an expensive thing in many ways.

And God says to all of us, you are no chicken; you are an eagle. Fly, eagle, fly. And God wants us to shake ourselves, spread our pinions, and then lift off and soar and rise, and rise toward the confident and the good and the beautiful. Rise towards the compassionate and the gentle and the caring. Rise to become what God intends us to be - eagles, not chickens.

How could you have a soccer team if all were goalkeepers? How would it be an orchestra if all were French horns?

The heart of the Christian Gospel is precisely that God is the all holy One; the all powerful One is also the One full of mercy and compassion. He is not a neutral God inhabiting some inaccessible Mount Olympus. He is a God who cares about His children and cares enormously for the weak, the poor, the naked, the downtrodden, the despised. He takes their side not because they are good, since many of them are demonstrably not so. He takes their side because He is that kind of God, and they have no one else to champion them.

Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.

I'm coming to believe more and more in the truth that everything we do has consequences. A good deed doesn't just evaporate and disappear.

We must be ready to learn from one another, not claiming that we alone possess all truth and that somehow we have a corner on God.